Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Yuki ❯ Silence ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: Gravitation does not belong to me. Ne, I doubt Gravitation would be as good if I owned it anyway. I'm not making any money out of this either and am just borrowing its characters….

A/N: Shortest chapter so far. I just figured I should stop near the end, because the rest just doesn't fit if I write anymore. ^^;; *_* Can you tell I'm rushing a bit and want some more posted? Sort of. I had to get the conversation between Rage and Hiro out (totally taking Maiko out of the picture because she just didn't fit). And, as I was writing this chapter, an idea for how this chapter should go popped out of nowhere and that just didn't fit with the scene between Rage and Hiro very well. For anyone wondering, the next chapter would probably have Smile as a title, with, hopefully, lotsa flashbacks. (Like, Eiri's attempts on returning to old routine, Ryuichi convincing Hiro to join up with him and…. something else *grins*) If said flashbacks inside parenthesis do not come out next chapter, expect them in future - they're there : 3 Oh and still unedited *_* I may need a beta reader…

Five: Silence

Yukito quietly sat himself down, the blush on his cheeks only worsening when he noticed the all-too-familiar blonde at the other end of the table. Gasping, he almost bolted right out of his seat before the notion of greeting even crossed his mind.

"To…To…Tohma-kun?!" he stammered before swallowing and bowing his head slightly. A highly amused chuckle escaped the soft-spoken keyboardist's lips.

"Good Evening. I..I didn't notice you!" Immediately, he turned to his fiancée with confused and questioning look. "Ne… uh…Ai… I... I didn't know -"

Ai smiled benevolently and laughing softly she said, "I told you we were getting a special visitor today."

Yuki's mouth opened and then closed and then opened again and finally he heaved a sigh. "Gomen, gomen Tohma-kun! I wasn't expecting anyone THAT specia-"

"Fujiwara-san does not regard other iGo players very highly, you see." Freesia cut in casually, a fork in hand as she waved it slightly as if to emphasize her point, and Yukito frowned.

"Well… I may not be too… fond... of them and-"

"And treat them as God." Anne finished for him, giggling and causing the blush on the brunette's face to spread and deeper in hue.

"I mean… uh…" Yuki muttered quietly before hanging his head, "…nevermind…"

"Anne, I think you're being a bit too hard on poor Yuki here." Tohma said with a laugh before calmly taking the spoon and fork in his hand and smiling at them.

"Well, are we eating or not?"

---

"I miss him, Hiroshi."

Hiro turned to his right, just in time to catch Rage's eyes flicker with an emotion he knew all to well. He smiled knowingly and tilted his head to gaze at the stars.

"I know the feeling." He said quietly, in a voice that was almost a whisper. Neither of them had to elaborate, both knowing what each other meant by that 'miss', both feeling the same thing, though, perhaps, on different levels.

The cemetery was silent, except for the occasionally sound of birds from somewhere far away and the wind itself, blowing gently. Maiko left them a few hours ago, after a rather lengthy conversation about her genki older brother, telling them she had several tests the next day while Bill - Rage's personal bodyguard - had gone to wait for his boss in their car sometime in between their conversations about Shuichi.

"It's unfair, you know." Rage said softly, pouting slightly as she did so. "It's okay… if I can't have him as long as I can watch him…."

"Aa…" Hiro found his gaze trailing away to the bouquet of peach roses he'd brought now lying on the patch of grass in front of Shuichi's gravestone.

"…But I can't watch him anymore." Rage finished and then sighed.

Hiro didn't say anything, knowing that saying anything more about that was, decidedly, going to do more bad to him than good. If there was one thing the 'Genius Guitarist' wasn't, it was 'gay'.

Then again, looking back, Shuichi wasn't exactly gay. And he wasn't exactly straight either…[1]

"Your Japanese's improved, y'know?" Hiro commented, mind not quite in what Rage was saying, but nevertheless there.

"Thank you."

"Just pointing out what's there." Hiro said quietly and then found his lips curving to form a small smile.

"Hiroshi."

"Hmm?" Hiro turned his head to face Rage.

"Sometimes, when you think about it. Do you get….-upset with-… Shuichi?" Rage asked quietly, carefully picking out her words and even using a word in English to get her desired meaning across.

'Upset with Shuichi?' Hiro thought quietly before coming into a conclusion that, maybe, he was.

"Maybe." He said, voicing his thoughts.

"That's… relieving." Rage took a deep breath. "I always get upset when I think about it. But… not only at Shuichi."

"At everyone else, eh?"

Rage managed a laugh, a bitter one, "Yeah. And it seems I never run out of people to blame for his death too when I think about it… hard…"

Hiro nodded in silence and then remembered the pack of cigarettes he had in his pants' back pocket.

"You mind if I smoked?" he asked quietly.

"No." Rage replied in the same fashion, folding her hands on her chest. Hiro proceeded to light a cigarette.

"It's just not fair." Rage said quietly, knowing she'd said it once already but felt like she'd said more than that.

"Nothing ever is." Hiro took a drag from his cigarette and closed his eyes.

"But it's silly!" Rage retorted, shutting her eyes and turning away. "Shuichi Shindou dies in car accident. That…. that's just…"

"…surreal?" Hiro suggested.

Rage sneered. "…ridiculous."

"Aa…" Hiro took a deep breath before taking another drag from his cigarette. He watched as the smoke seemed to glow in the dark, illuminated by the moonlight.

"He maybe an idiot but he's not stupid enough to deliberately crash a car into another car, or drive or let anyone drive drunk."

"I know."

"You realize how I screamed when I heard the news? It's just… just…" She paused and Hiro noticed her hands ball into fists. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"I wanted to grab my bazooka and fly back to Japan just to blow his brains for good…. Stupid!" Rage finished and Hiro couldn't help but smile.

"You didn't think he was dead, did you?"

"No." Rage snapped, "I thought it was just… just one of those stupid rumors. I thought, that couldn't possibly happen. Hell NO - not Shuichi Shindou…."

Her voice softened, declining into a soft whisper, as she finished, "...But it did happen…"

"I know the feeling." Hiro took another drag on his cigarette and then flicked the ashes on it off.

"….I read all the articles that time. I wanted to shoot them and knock some sense out of them." Rage continued. "They said Shuichi got drunk… or or.. partied with the wrong people… or.. actually wanted to commit suicide in the first place…. But that's just not him-"

"That's all they're after… speculations." Hiro put in quietly.

"Idiots."

"I know."

Rage bit her lip. She wanted to say more, more about what she thought was just wrong but found no words to describe everything that was, at that moment, running through her mind. Too many words, too many ideas, contradicting statements. She knew she would take hours if she went through all of them with Hiro, and what use would doing that be?

All she knew was that Shuichi couldn't possibly have gotten himself killed on purpose, or by 'accident' as many newspapers put it. It was just… too uncharacteristic of him. Too unlikely. Too improbable. Too un-Shuichi. One doesn't drive for five hours, for many miles, just to kill himself when he could, just as easily, kill himself a few meters away. Roads and moving cars just weren't that uncommon in Japan.

And the car Shuichi had been in - he couldn't possibly have been driving, in Rage's mind - did not just crash into a car, a moving vehicle, once but twice. It had crashed into a private vehicle first, killing its driver instantly, before crashing into a truck carrying barrels of oil and bursting into flames.

It just wasn't right.

She remembered seeing pictures of the vocalist's mobile phone lying brokenly on the burnt asphalt road, scraps of metal behind it. She remembered thinking how it was just wrong.

Hiro had been right : It was surreal.

"I don't think it's just an accident." Rage murmured finally, after the long pregnant silence. "I…I asked Judy… to... to run a check. She… she didn't find anything."

"There isn't anything to find." Hiro's lips dissolved into a thin line. "Shuichi's dead, that's all there is to it."

"No…" Rage swallowed, "That's just it."

This caught Hiro's attention immediately. In the moonlight, he saw the seriousness in Rage's eyes clearly and the way her eyebrows were drawn together.

"You just don't find nothing - clean empty nothing. You find something, even tiny bits… Someone... someone's put a lid on it all…" She trailed away, one name crossing her mind.

She knew the same name had crossed Hiro's mind because of the way his eyebrows narrowed.

Silence followed with neither of them wanting nor having anything to say anymore. And they remained like that for a long time, lost in thoughts, in realizations.

Seguchi Tohma

---

[1] While in the anime, Shuichi came out rather… well… that. In the manga, he gave off the impression (at least to me) that he was not attracted to any other men, really, except Yuki (and Ryuichi, but that's God ^_~) I maybe mistaken, but those are just my thoughts….

Anyway, response to reviews! (Yay - changing the summary helped. *_*)

anime-earth - Thanks ^_^ And I'll work hard on filling those gaps, though I think stuff are going too slow, don't you think? *glares at her muses*

CTFA, Vince and Payu - (^_^;;) Thanks for adding this fic to your favorites.. ahh! *hearts all over the place* My very first anime fanfic gets to go to a "list" - so happy! And… *grins* I really can't say much about your assumption though… ^^ *coughs* *Shuichi peers from somewhere behind the curtains and then darts back behind it* *coughs* Secrets, you know? Suspense : 3 ^^;; (Though that just maybe the reason this fic isn't as interesting as other fics out there.. just lacks romance…)

Critic - Woo! Long review. I just ticked off that thing from the settings panel that disallows anonymous reviews, thanks for reminding me ^^;; For one, you're right, Yukito isn't like Shuichi. And, I can't deny plans for a little Yuki/Eiri (no pun intended) things here there, but that was pretty obvious, now, I guess? Hints. *sighs* We'll just wait and see, I guess? Though there is a chance this will end up as Yuki/Shuichi, one way or another… *grins*

*nods* Bows down. And here ends my chapter. More on six, I promise. ^_^ I just felt I should write a bit in between instead of making people wait and wait for a week more. (I have exams next week and minor exams this week, by the way.) Once again, gomen if this wasn't very good…Trying my best here to write good… XD Ahh!

^_^